by Peter Wright
A new cry from the yard. Barking dogs, the men shouting. You roll onto your side. The girl still and naked in the grass. Legs spread, arms outstretched, the pose of a fallen star. Her face turned and hidden by a mask of hair. A dark strip of cloth around her neck. The girl’s body a border—the men on her left, one fumbling into his shorts—and to her right, a Rottweiler and a mutt no larger than Chestnut. The small dog yips, charges forward and back, nimble leaps over the girl’s legs. The Rottweiler’s throat curdles, guttural threats before it charges with a jangle of tags. The men’s half-stumbling escape around the house’s side and then the dog’s silent return, its snout prodding the girl’s shoulder and hair. The Rottweiler licks her arm then makes his way to the alley. The mutt on its heels then scuttling ahead. You’re transfixed by the girl’s tranquility. By the moonlight shine of her breasts and pelvis. By the sober understanding that here is a new reel for your horror film.
You crawl back and crouch behind the roof’s peak. The flames have spread, the porch roof, the downstairs windows. The fire a living thing. Its draw of oxygen. Its consumption of wood and wire and plaster. Its groan of split beams and shattered glass. The crowd steps back, the closest shielding their faces. You’re distant, yet the heat reaches you, and you pull its warmth into your lungs.
The front door flings open. A stillness in the mob. The drums slow. The fire rumbles and moans. A man and a woman stagger onto the porch. Towels over their mouths. Their eyes blinking away the soot. The man the first to descend the stairs, the woman’s hand in his. She swoons and he catches her, and her weight brings him to his knees. An embrace, silhouettes before the flames. A reprieve before the crowd remembers itself and rushes forward. Makeshift weapons raised—bats and rakes and shovels. The couple consumed.
You turn, your back resting against the roof’s peak. Go! You have no other plan. Go—back to Helen’s, to Chestnut, an extraction from this horror. You slide the gun back into your waistband and lower yourself from the roof. A trembling perch atop the trashcan then an easing onto solid ground. You move through the yard’s dim rhythms, the greater currents of smoke and clamor flowing above. Go but a deeper tide draws you to the body. You circle the girl, the path of a curious dog, observant yet distant. Your father taught you about dogs, their markings and sniffs divining the past’s ghosts, a hidden dimension you now understand for the act’s violence and terror lingers. You crouch, the grass cool. With a delicate touch, you brush the hair from the girl’s face.
Missy Blough’s eyes, watery and blank, consider you. A gaze from the bridge between worlds. The skin around her red bandanna pinched and blue. Her open mouth stuffed with white panties. With a delicate pinch, you pull the panties. The elastic catches a tooth. A snag, and with it, a lift of her jaw, a sigh as if she were struggling to utter a last word.
You back away. The panties fall to the grass. Your feet tangle with a soccer ball. The alley and you try to run, but your knees betray you, each step a spastic lurch. The macadam lists, left to right and back again. You place your hands against a garage, seeking balance as flecks of paint rub against your palm. Your head hung and the calliope of images spins behind your shut eyes. The vomit a surprise, warm, gagging. The bile of an empty stomach. You wipe your mouth and stagger forward. The waiting cross street recedes, an illogical geometry, and you think of the monkey you once saw in a dream. A beast with backward feet. Coming and going, going and coming.
A growl, close and low and deep. Go! but you can’t move. The desert inside you. The Rottweiler at the alley’s edge. The dog waist-tall and thick with muscle. A silky step from a car’s shadow. The faintest shimmer in its coal eyes, and the fear and unsteadiness drain from your body. This dog and you linked. Both of you castaways. Both of you silent by the side of a dead girl. You reach out, your hand steady, and the dog’s growl calms. Tail down, the Rottweiler steps forward. Its black snout twitches, its wetness on your fingers.
A shotgun blast echoes along the alley’s cars and garages. You cower then find your legs, and you and the dog scramble in opposite directions. Another gun, two quick shots. Your frantic backyard path, the obstacles rising from the dark, a trip over a hose. More gunfire, and you crouch under a tree, the smoke thick beneath the leaves. You retrieve the gun and lay the barrel against your cheek. They’ve lost their minds. All of them. The mob. The world. You.
You run. Your block, and you skirt the shine beneath the pole that held the rope. Your father lifted. The mouth that had only offered kindnesses reduced to gasps. His face pale then blue. His spastic feet. You slow and consider the light’s circling of moths. The moment’s peace and the violence of memory. His shadow passes over you.
You sit at the backyard picnic table. Your heart jagged but settling. The garbage bag retrieved. You pause and delicately lift the closed, riverside bloom. You consider the house, and in you, the sting of exile. A severing that’s left you invisible.
Invisible, and you rise above your body’s meat, above this yard and the night’s terror, and your machine—for you’re now a machine, have to be a machine to survive—moves with efficiency, its tremors shed. You cross the alley, upright, almost unafraid. The bag pulls at your hand, plastic whispers against your thigh. Helen’s yard, the sticker-bush hedge, and a whiff of smoke as you descend the basement stairwell. Chestnut barks, a warning then his welcome. You set aside the paint can propping the door. Chestnut waits, but when you kneel, he pauses before accepting your embrace. He circles you, his snout poking your jeans and shirt. Your scent carrying your story.
You wake with a gasp and your hand on your throat. A dream of the scarf you and your mother knitted. The blurred margin of real and not. Your heart thudding as you clench the cross of your mother’s necklace.
Swing your feet to the floor. The fire’s stink on your clothes, your hair and skin. You lean against the wall and peer out the side window. A passing van. An empty patch of sidewalk, and in the yard, the sycamore’s first dropped leaves. A woman jogs by, her dog on a long leash. You can imagine school and practice but not your place in them. You think of your house. Your parents. Of a branch you tossed into the swollen river, the stick visible then not. Gone.
The garbage bag beside the bed, its top weighted with Helen’s gun. You go downstairs. Chestnut on your heels. You rub your temples. The past has expelled you, and you need to envision a new future in order to make it real. You need to shut down your skull’s sputtering movies. Your mother and father. Missy. Your mother taught you about Occam's razor, but all the easy solutions have been stolen. Staying here. Going home. A car to steal. Refuge in an upstate cabin. The film hiccups, and you flinch at the sight of your mother’s blackened soles, at the strips of Missy’s milk-white skin. Your hand returns to your throat. Your pulse quickens. A phantom burn and the squeezing of your lungs. A riot in your heart but all else paralyzed. Breathe, a long inhale, a longer exhale, but the rhythm escapes you. The cross grasped tight. Silver sparks across your eyes. Flashes as bright as the magnesium strips you watched your father burn in a darkened lecture hall.
In the bathroom, you cup your hands beneath the spigot’s flow, but your focus unravels in the water’s tumble. You see the river, and if only you could fold yourself into the current and escape the body that’s become your prison and curse. You splash water over your face, calmly at first, then faster. Your shirt wet, drops on the floor, but you can’t wash away the smoke or the images that play behind your shut eyes. Dry your face then kneel on the linoleum and stroke Chestnut’s back. You’ll leave. Tonight. Possibilities are a luxury of the quantum plane, and all you’re left with is a dim, singular hope. One way or another, dawn will find you far away.
A knock at the front door, and you freeze. Another knock. A polite tone, one without venom but with the same promise to bring the outside crashing in. Chestnut in a frenzy, and each bark a betrayal. The dog scampers down the steps, you close behind, whispering, “It’s OK, boy. Come here. Come here.”
You move through the downstairs, bent
double, aware of windows and spying eyes. You sit on the dining room floor with your back against the wall. Whispers. “Please, Chestnut. Please.” The knocking stops, and after a final, preening bark, the dog returns. You scoop him up and whisper soft assurances. Then the back door. The knocking louder this time, and in each successive rattle, you think of murder—fire—a used girl left beneath the smoke. Your grasp on Chestnut so sure you fear you’ll hurt him. Your words a mantra of all the jittery calm you can muster. “It’s OK. It’s OK.”
The knocking ceases, and with the dog in your arms, you retreat to the basement. You’ll barricade yourself in Helen’s safe room. The tremor of the sliding metal bar. A shut door, a starless dark. You’ll stave off the world until the threat passes then you’ll leave and never return. This house. This town. You’re halfway down the steps when a man’s voice joins you in the basement. “Hello?”
You slump onto the stairs. The basement door left unlocked—last night’s frightened return, your right-thinking undone by nerves, by Missy Blough’s unblinking eyes. The man’s voice again: “Hello?” A voice that belongs to the knock. Apologetic, wanting to help, a voice that fades amid the basement clutter, and for you, a hesitation. The weighing of whether to speak, to step forward and throw yourself up to the merciful world in which your father believed. You remain silent.
Chestnut twists, a yipping escape. A flop onto the stair and you succeed in righting but not catching him. The dog’s labored descent, a stair and a bark at a time. He reaches the bottom and charges. You clamp a hand over your mouth. Captured breath, the taste of your Shut-In mask, and beneath your ribs, a keening pressure. The wind-sprint heave of your lungs. Your cartwheeling heart.
No line of vision connects the door to the steps. The man’s voice gentle, inviting: “Hey, boy. Hey there, boy. I was wondering about you.” The dog’s nails scratch over concrete. The basements smells of must and mildew. Chestnut’s yipping bark. You bite your knuckle, fighting off the spasms and the tears. You picture the neighbor you’ve seen talking to Helen and wonder if he belonged to the mob. Chestnut’s frenzy eases. The man’s voice softer: “Come here. Come on now.”
The barks stop. “You’re a good boy, aren’t you?” the man coos. The screen door shuts. Remove your fist from your mouth. A gasp, a greedy breath and an understanding of drowning. Tears on your cheeks. Tears for your dog and for the silence that muffles your heart. Tears for the all of it and for the nothing you have left.
You rock, movements rooted in brainstem, as automatic as breathing. Fold your arms across your belly, your fingers digging into your sides. You rock to stay atop the current. You rock to push aside your gut’s hollow rot. You rock to prove you’re more than dust. A flowerpot shakes on the step below your feet. The clank of terracotta, and the note rises from the pot’s open mouth, a tone that lifts and warbles until the pot falls, an end-over-end tumble, and shatters on the concrete.
You need to go. Before the vandals come to ransack the house. Before the police. You stand, but your knees buckle. The dust swirls inside you, the hiss and static of your broken machine. A grip on the handrail, a step-at-a-time climb. The first floor—kitchen, dining room. This shell, its human parts flowing out as surely as blood. The next flight of steps harder. Your perception melts, the house’s plumb lines warped. You’re alone. You own nothing beyond the items you can carry. You lie down and think of the heartbeat that separates the living and the dead, the cusp of knowledge and the abandonment of the body. You close your eyes and drift. Then, in your emptiness, a filament. Dull at first then waxing brighter. You’ll find her. You will.
Your packing like a geometry problem, questions of volume and space. The room illuminated by disparate sources. The streetlamp. The moon and stars. When necessity dictates, you flick on the pen flashlight. The beam pans across your problem’s variables. What you’ll wear—jeans, a black long-sleeved top, hiking boots. What you’ll pack—a poncho, a sweatshirt, black thermals, sneakers, a hat and gloves. What you’ll eat—a bag of peanut butter sandwiches, some crackers and pretzels. Then the rest—Helen’s money, a knife, twine, tampons. The gun. You fill and empty the backpack, your equation without balance until you begin to subtract. You stuff your pockets—the money and knife. The laces of your sneakers tied to the pack’s bottom. You put on the sweatshirt and slide the gun into the front pocket. The bag’s remaining contents pushed and stuffed, a fight with the zipper.
Lie on the downstairs couch, the pack hugged against your chest. The pack’s weight your anchor, the tide all around. Have a plan. You could steal a car, but beyond finding a set of keys, you have no idea how to go about that. You could steal a bike, navigate the alleys across town to your uncle’s house, but you fear the sharing of your own bad luck. The neighbors fond of snooping from pulled-back curtains. Judases eager to prove their loyalty.
3:35 on the stove display. Cool, blue digits. You pause in the doorway, a look back. A goodbye to the shelter of locked doors and a roof before you cast yourself back into the tide. A breeze in the backyard. The oak’s leaves still green. The black-eyed Susans’ fading blooms. The sycamores have already paled, and their dropped leaves scuttle on the wind, a crisp snagging around hedges and garages. You enter your backyard. Rhythmic taps to your back and belly, the dangling sneakers, the gun. You study the house next door and think about Chestnut. Then your father’s garden and memories everywhere. His spirit not in the broken pots but in stems and roots. You pause by the back stoop. Inside, everything broken, the little that remains violated by the mob’s sweat and curses. But here in the dark garden, your father waits. These wonders of adaptation and evolution. The beauty of a single, red bloom.
You crouch behind the azalea bush and listen for cars and dogs but only the crickets answer. You flush a rabbit, a bounding path, a melting white tail. The grass tall in Dr. Klein’s backyard. Spider webs break over your face. You run the final alley stretch.
A sidewalk leads from the alley to Fran’s back stoop. To your right, their small garage, cinderblock, swinging wood doors and dirty windows. To your left, the dwarf maple and its veil of drooping branches. You push aside the branches and settle into the space beneath, a return to hideaways and summer games. You slide off your pack and use it for a pillow. Around you, the scent of earth and must, and no matter how you curl, you can’t keep your boots from sticking out from beneath the branches.
Have a plan. Your father urged you to see beyond the moment, but the fog of the past days has claimed you, and the luxury of making everything right feels more and more like a fairy tale. Reunion, salvation, happy endings—they hang about you, as flimsy as the daydreams you and Fran once shared in this damp space. You lie across the dirt and tuck your knees to your chest. This much you know—you want to be safe. You want to sleep in a bed. You want to talk to Fran, and in time, tell her the things you’ve seen. You want a hug from Fran’s mother. You want to start the work of finding your mother. You want to be loved and recognized and counted among the living. You want to be unafraid of the night. You want to cry for your father.
You open your eyes, unsure if you’ve slept. The predawn gray ebbs between the leaves, and above the lawn, a white fog. The sun low, and its haze outlines the trees and houses. In the neighbor’s yard, an apple tree, windfalls in the grass. Fran’s house splintered by the hanging branches. A car rumbles down the alley. The maple’s branches rustle, a sprinkle of dew. You wait. The sun inches higher. A squirrel gathers acorns. In the distance, the whir of a power saw, the clatter of metal. A pair of boys from your grade walk the alley, backpacks over their shoulders and their sneakers kicking stones. You’re relieved, your grasp of time fractured, your fear today might be a weekend. You turn your attention to the house and wait for the back door to open.
You hear Fran first. A goodbye to her mother, a promise to call if practice is rained out. The door shuts, Fran’s slow walk, one hand plugging in an earbud, the other bud dangling around her neck. Her thoughts no doubt on school, tests and papers. Your
coach. Todd Abbott. You remain still and consider staying tucked beneath the leaves. An excuse of not wanting to startle your friend; the truth that you’re afraid of setting in motion what you can’t control. Afraid of a world that’s left you behind. Afraid the people you’ve lost and that the horrors you’ve witnessed are masked by a face that hasn’t changed—and beneath that face waits a heart that can never be the same. Indeed, nothing can be the same. This neighborhood. These people and their belief in God and country. A picture—your feet and hands taking root. Your mouth sewn with vines. A lapse into a dormant state, a claiming by the soil. The freedom to never speak again.
“Fran?”
Fran pauses. Her hair cut since the last time you saw her. She pauses, looks behind her, the earbud removed, the music a faint crackle. “Fran?” You sit up. Your cloak of leaves trembles. You push aside a branch and squint in the slanting light.